This is my daughter
She is not my genetics
She is not my blood
She is not my legacy
And she is not my mistake
She was as well thought out
And finely crafted as any work of art
You’d be lucky to glimpse
At the Louvre
She is a metaphor
An allusion
A simile
And an allegory
I use these words because
To attempt to administer
Their mechanics upon her
Would surely be to fall short
I give her the best and the last of mine
Not because she is worthy of that
But because I am not worthy to withhold it from her
She is my worshipper and my god
My student and my teacher
I strive to be a better man
So that she knows what a good man is
My example is her scout
My lessons are her infantry
My advice her cavalry
And my fists are her royal guard
Though this far her enemies will not get
For I have crafted her with resilience and guile
Enough for a dozen of her
I have made sure she is
Powerful
And Delicate
Beautiful
And ass-kickin
She won’t kick ass and take names
She’ll kick ass and forget names
Cause forget those people
She’s better than them

And on the other hand
With her other hands
She will embrace
The faces of grace
Of men and women and children and elders
She’ll lift the weak from the fires in which they smolder
And place their feet upon her shoulders
And with words so sweet inhale their boulders

My duty, as a father
Is not simply to assure she gets farther
But that she betters our mother
Through the lessons in which I’ve taught her
Mine eyes and thoughts upon her
Are as necessary as water
And if once you had pause to ponder
Know that this is my daughter

It seems that they have much higher expectations of their celebrities. I may even go so far as saying they may be a little over-expectant, though I think that expecting too much from celebrities is better than the near-negative volume of expectations we have for ours. Though even with that there are limits.

I’ve come across two instances of their celebrities being treated… well, one appropriately, and the other, in my opinion, far too harshly.

The first is a fellow whose music I’ve grown to really enjoy over the last few weeks, MC Mong (Shin Dong-Hyun).

What I gather is that his dentist had to remove two teeth a few years ago effectively removing him from having to serve his two years of compulsory military service as is their custom. The dentist had come out and said that MC Mong had paid him to remove the tooth which, of course, is highly illegal.

Well, after four other dentists who had previously treated MC Mong came forward and said that the allegations were false, the original one changed his statement saying that the two teeth he had removed were irreparable and necessitated removal and that the police had told him to intensify his report so they could score an arrest on nearly false grounds.

Well, with all said and done they had no proof that he had purposely avoided national service, but that there certainly was a delay that was unacceptably inexplicable and he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, one year of probation and 120 hours of community service.

This might seem harsh to some of you, but it’s no less then what would happen to a Regular Joe in the same position and that’s the point.

The other guy is from the Pop group, 2PM, and his name is Jay Park (Park Jae-Beom). Less my style than MC Mong, yet still notable in this discussion.

His case is a bit more… extreme…

He grew up in Seattle, Washington and moved to South Korea to be a Pop star in 2005 when he was 18 and, like any teenager in a highly differing culture, he was missing the US and made some comments to a friend back in Washington expressing intense, childish displeasure with his current situation.

Well, jump forward four years to 2009… Someone hacked his MySpace, found the emails and sent them to the South Korean media who, of course, misinterpreted and mistranslated them so that they seemed WAY worse than they were. All this sparked intense controversy and he was essentially exiled from the country by his fans and found himself back in Seattle again. His record contract was terminated as well.

Luckily, his band mates and many of their core fan base remained loyal throughout the entire process. When people eventually realized the media’s mistake they were apologetic and Mr. Park has since been welcomed back to South Korea. Even with this, however, the entire thing seems a little outlandish, especially when you take into consideration that at one point there was a petition going around for Mr. Park to kill himself that got, I believe, around 3000 signatures… Ridiculous.

And, after all of this, then you take into account the way we treat our celebrities… You have situations like Lindsay Lohan who commits crime after crime over and over while remaining relatively unpunished

Also, there’s Quinton “Rampage” Jackson whose reckless driving in 2008 resulted in multiple hits-and-runs, one of which cause the still birth of a child and all he got was 200 hours community service. Even though most of the charges were dismissed, he was still only looking at 3 years in prison for reckless driving and a $25,000 civil case for the stillbirth.

The only celebrity that has been properly charged lately, that I know of, is Wesley Snipes. He got three years in prison for 3 accounts of tax evasion which is the typical charge for the crime.

Now, here’s the question… is it better to expect too much from your celebrities even though their job is simply to sing and dance like overpaid monkeys or to expect next to nothing from them and capitalize on their failures as a prime source of “entertainment”? Or are they two sides of the same coin? What do you think?

She spends most of her time running around naked and sitting on her potty, but she hasn’t pissed anywhere but there and, occasionally, her pull-ups for over a week now.

At first she was having trouble with it getting all over the floor, but she’s figured that out.

The only thing we’re having difficulty with currently is, for some… I can’t even think of the proper term… She plays in her piss.

What the hell is that?

She’ll step in it and put her toys in the pot… no other kid does this, but there she is…

She’ll grow out of it someday, but it’s still mind-boggling.

There’s got to be some sort of mental process that factors this into her behavior since she’s always had a problem with taking off her diaper at night and painting her bedroom walls with shit. And, despite having no friends who have had this problem with their children, it’s apparently common enough to be marked with a cutesy little title for the toddler in question.

]]>https://fartherhood.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/little-miss-pissed/feed/1fartherhoodIt’s Official!https://fartherhood.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/its-official/
https://fartherhood.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/its-official/#respondTue, 07 Jun 2011 23:53:34 +0000http://fartherhood.wordpress.com/?p=13Well, I think I’ve pretty much exhausted my options to the point that I am now fully exhausted of options.

I asked about it on answers.com and I even asked someone on Facebook that a friend had pointed me towards and I haven’t received an answer anywhere. I’m thinking that maybe it’s more dumb luck than nobody knowing, but who knows?

So, now I’m fated to find out what it’s like to raise a daughter as a single father in South Korea without any sort of foresight.

That’s life. That’s what all the people say.

Should be interesting to say the least and maybe this will help some poor bastard in a similar position someday. Either that, or help some bored folks through their cloudy Sunday afternoons by exposing them to my buffoonery. That’s right… I said buffoonery. Deal with it.

I was curious what I can expect from South Korean culture so I decided to look up some of the local music. Highly impressed.

So before this the extent of my South Korean exposure was the film Oldboy (Soooooo good… as long as you turn it off15 minutes before the end…) and the occasional episode of M.A.S.H..

(Farther, you know you’ve never seen a full episode of M.A.S.H….)

Well… Ok, whatever. One movie is the limit of my cultural exposure to the country. There. You happy?

(Are you sad?)

…a little…

(Then I’m happy.)

Awesome…

Anyway, I decided to do a little research on some of the popular music in the country and was happily surprised by some serious talent. Here’s a taste with accompanying YouTube videos after the jump.

Hip Hop: I was incredibly surprised by the Hip Hop scene there. I was expecting it to be terrible but there’s some good stuff.

Drunken Tiger: Korean-American Hip Hop group. Amazing! Tiger JK, the band leader, grew up in LA in the 90s and you can hear serious 90s West Coast Hip Hop influences in his work. He moves back a forth between English and Korean seamlessly also. I’m really happy with this find.

Outsider: Fastest rapper in South Korea. The production on this song reminds me of some of Twista’s production. Either way, he’s good.

MC Mong: Hahaha! I love this guy’s style. Great humor and a song equating love to ice cream. Awesome.

K-Pop/R&B: A lot of their Pop music is crap just like all Pop music, but they still have some good’uns.

HaHa: I really like this song. Reminds me a lot of where R&B was here in the states in the mid 2000’s.

Tasha Reid: Tiger JK’s wife. She was born in Portland, TX to a South Korean mother and an African-American father. In a country as homogenous as South Korea her fame was unlikely to say the least, but her popularity just goes to show that progress is made with every generation, no matter where. It doesn’t hurt that she’s widely considered the best singer to ever grace the South Korean pop charts either though.

BoA: She’s huge in South Korea and Japan but when she used this song to try to break into the American market she quickly went back in defeat. Despite the fact that I can’t recall a single Asian singer breaking into the American market ever, I don’t see why this song didn’t catch. Not only does it have the Dubstep influences that are huge in our Pop music right now, she’s also cute, a good dancer and better than half the folks in our Pop charts currently. I guess sometimes shit just happens.

Metal: Most of their metal sounds like cheap knock-off Euro-metal but there are a couple gems.

a doom: This is a Gothic Metal band. I haven’t heard a good Gothic Metal band since the Australian band Virgin Black. They aren’t amazing but I think they’re pretty solid.

Crash: They have a much more modern sound than a lot of their brethren. They sound like a lot of the newer Thrash Metal acts of the mid 2000’s.

Moonshine: A bit of good Black Metal. Very riff and keyboard heavy stuff. Little bit of Goth thrown in for good measure. Me gusta.

These are just some of my favorites that I found in an afternoon. There’s plenty of others out there. If you’re interested go find them!

My name is Farther. In three months me and my daughter will be moving to Osan, South Korea. I am learning basic etiquete and customs as well as basics in the Korean language. My daughter is only 2.5 years old so she will get most things through experience. But I’m determined to have “Ahn-Nyeong Hah-Seh-Yo” be part of her lexicon before we get there, at the very least. She’s getting close.

I plan on using this Blog to share all of my experiences preparing for my move and also all of my experiences actually living there. Hopefully, this Blog will be able to help myself, my daughter and my readers.

I also plan on connecting some of these posts with an accompanying Vlog on YouTube.